The Stop Hate for Profit campaign asks companies not to advertise on Facebook during the month of July.
I tried to follow and understand the Facebook boycott thing a bit, and I admit that I’m still not very clear on it. I guess you could say I don’t believe anything, meaning the noise will die and end up in the landfill where almost all attempts to boycott the internet giants end up.
The campaign was launched on 17 June by Free Press y Common Sense Mediasupported by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The action was called “Stop Hate for Profit“, something like “Stop Hate for Profit” or not hate for money.
The last thing I read was that about 160 companies, including some of the big ones, had already decided to pull advertising campaigns on Facebook as a reaction to the social network’s lack of action to control “toxic information” and hate speech.
The Zucker, seeing that the shares on the stock market were going down a bit with the Stop Hate for Profit guys’ chopping block, had to getting out of the way to say that they were going to do this, that and the rest about it.
Related:
The history of Facebook (and the boycott) in vignettes
Tom Fishburne discusses the Facebook boycott in his blog and accompanies the reflection with a series of satirical cartoons he has made over the years.
With almost all boycotts that aim very high I have more or less the same feeling.
While it seems necessary and sometimes even healthy to point the finger at the money to make it clear to the boycotted that they have a lot to lose, it always seems that the response of the rest of the actors who directly or indirectly also form an active part of the equation and can turn the boycott into something unexpected is forgotten or not wanted to be intuited.
There is a lot of talk about companies that withdraw their advertising, but little or nothing is known about whether they have lost users, which I don’t think they have. I suspect that there is still a very large volume of users who don’t give a damn about these things.
Even if you read that Facebook is half dead, that it is the network of the oldies and things like that, I think there is still a significant mass of people for whom“their feisbu” is the only gateway to the internet. They don’t even think about stopping using it and as long as they are there, the advertisers will come back.
There are also quite a few who still believe that Zucker’s company is like some kind of NGO that should look after their content, their freedom of expression and other fundamental rights.
Every time something they have published is deleted or they are punished for a few days like children without being able to upload their stuff, it doesn’t even cross their minds to open a blog to have more control and freedom of action without the absurd limits of FB. Because a blog is for old people, I suppose they think.
Another thing is that, according to many advertising experts, Facebook doesn’t get the bulk of its income from big advertisers, but rather from the many small and medium-sized ones who consider that they can’t do without advertising their products there.
From that mud, this is nothing
Cartoon of 25/03/2018 in CTXT
If the 2018 Cambridge Analytica affair hasn’t left Facebook with a trace of damage, the mentality of those who use it will have to change a lot for something real to happen with this Stop Hate for Profit.
To understand the story of Facebook and Cambridge Analytica (a few elements) you can start with the first video of Channel 4’s investigative work and continue with the second part.
Shortly afterwards, the US Federal Trade Commission tickled Facebook with a fine of $5 billion (actually they agreed on the amount). The cause was violating users’ privacy on account of, among other things, the Cambridge Analyticaaffair. For Facebook, the fine was equivalent to a handful of peanuts.
The usual simplistic “what a novelty” or “the product is you” and that if you don’t want your data to be milked for the joy of Zuckerberg’s balance, don’t use Facebook.
Yes, this has always been Facebook’s business, the only novelty is knowing the specific shit they use the data for. Cambridge Analytica didn’t do simple market research and campaigns aimed at X profiles to sell coffee machines, it went much further. They went on to deny that they used data from a thousand and one hundred tons of Facebook accounts to campaign for Trump.
That may be the least of it, but the point is that the data ended up in the hands of real foul play mafiosi masquerading as good analysts.
And it seems that it doesn’t matter that Facebook has been a favourite nest and the most fertile ground for the spread of fake news or that it has been collecting data for years beyond what is “necessary” and that Mark still thinks we are idiots.
Now, as always, there are still three options: continue to fatten the pockets of a bunch of suckers with data so that we don’t miss out on this regulated micro-world of supposed news and megastuffs, put it to very limited use, or close the account.
Stop Hate for Profit is a good cause, perhaps with a poor wording because Facebook not only lives on hate, but also on privacy violations and the silencing of certain voices, among many other forms of rubbish.
